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Refining the measurement of distress intolerance
R Kathryn McHugh1, Michael W Otto
1Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse, McLean Hospital, 115 Mill Street, Belmont, MA 02478, USA. kmchugh@mclean.harvard.edu
Behavior Therapy
|June 16, 2012
Summary
Distress intolerance (DI) is key in psychological disorders. This study identified 10 core items to create a unified measure for consistent distress intolerance assessment across research.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Psychopathology
- Clinical Psychology
Background:
- Distress intolerance (DI) is a transdiagnostic variable linked to psychological disorders.
- Existing self-report measures for DI lack a gold standard, leading to inconsistent application and hindering research comparability.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the latent factor structure of existing DI measures.
- To determine if current measures capture a shared underlying construct.
- To identify a core set of items for a unified DI measure.
Main Methods:
- Confirmatory factor analysis was performed on data from three samples (N=400).
- Individual items from four DI scales were correlated with the identified latent factor.
- Item-factor concordance was used to select the most representative items.
Main Results:
- Confirmatory factor analysis supported a single-factor latent structure for DI.
- Ten items demonstrated strong concordance with the core DI construct.
- These 10 items consistently captured the essence of distress intolerance across samples.
Conclusions:
- A unified 10-item measure of distress intolerance can be developed.
- This measure can enhance consistency and comparability in DI research.
- Future research should evaluate the utility of this proposed unified measure.
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